stone-bridged burn and a toll-bar at the bottom of the valley.
This hillside was the ancient Burghmuir where King James
of old gathered a great host of Scots to march and fight and
perish on Flodden Field.

Bobby had not gone this way homeward before, and was puzzled by
the smell of prosperous little shops, and by the park-like odors
from college campuses to the east, and from the well-kept
residence park of George Square. But when the cart rattled across
Lauriston Place he picked up the familiar scents of milk and wool
from the cattle and sheep market, and then of cottage dooryards,
of turned furrows and of farmsteads.

The earth wears ever a threefold garment of beauty. The human
person usually manages to miss nearly everything but the
appearance of things. A few of us are so fortunate as to have
ears attuned to the harmonies woven on the wind by trees and
birds and water; but the tricky weft of odors that lies closest
of all, enfolding the very bosom of the earth, escapes us. A
little dog, traveling with his nose low, lives in another stratum
of the world, and experiences other pleasures than his master.
He has excitements that he does his best to share, and that send
him flying in pursuit of phantom clues.

From the top of the Burghmuir it was easy going to Bobby. The
snow had gone off in a thaw, releasing a multitude of autumnal
aromas. There was a smell of birch and beech buds sealed up in
gum, of berries clotted on the rowan-trees, and of balsam and
spice from plantations of Highland firs and larches. The babbling
water of the burn was scented with the dead bracken of glens down